When the interview committee asked why I was interested in the executive director position at the American Library Association (ALA), I replied, doing my best impression of famed mountaineer George Mallory: “Because it’s the ALA!” I was responding, of course, to my belief in libraries and in the right to read, both of which have been under serious attack. And library workers and advocates who defend reading, books, and unfettered access to knowledge are critical to protecting American democracy. So, to be part of the organization most squarely in the forefront of that cause seemed to me an unmissable opportunity, and a great honor.
Neither of my parents went to college, but I am fortunate that they read constantly and took me and my siblings to the library every week. No vacation began without a trip to the bookstore or library to stock up—everything from comic books to Robert Louis Stevenson (I still have my hardcover Treasure Island from those days).
So, perhaps predictably, I became an English teacher. I started my career at Chicago’s city colleges, teaching English as a second language to people newly arrived in the United States. It was a deeply moving and uplifting experience that propelled me into a career teaching English full-time at Niles North High School in Skokie, Illinois.
I was lucky to land a job in a district that had maintained a tremendous level of resources for students in an exceedingly diverse community. It also featured a strong teachers’ union that worked hard to defend the educational program. I quickly learned that my professional life as a teacher—and the conditions in which I would teach and my students would learn—was absolutely dependent on the success of my union.
I’ve spent the past 15 years as president of the 103,000-member Illinois Federation of Teachers (IFT), the statewide union affiliated with the American Federation of Teachers. In that capacity, I have had to manage the daily operations of a large staff in the service of a diverse membership in every corner of the state and in many different jobs—including school librarians in both public and private institutions and academic librarians at colleges and universities. Whether we were fighting in the state legislature for more school funding or working in partnership with parents to push back against threats to public education, I felt a powerful unity between my work as a teacher and my responsibility as an advocate for the profession.
I always saw it as my job to uplift the work of our members who toil every day in trying conditions with scant resources, often subject to unwarranted political attacks while just trying to do their jobs. (Sound familiar?) I am proud of the work we did at IFT, and I have the same excitement for helping ALA to be ever more effective in its mission to advocate for our libraries and all the folks who work in them. Ultimately, the communities we serve are the beneficiaries of our work, and that’s why it is so critical.
Some years ago, at a conference in San Antonio, I walked over to the main library. Carved in stone on a lintel above the entrance was a quote attributed to Ralph Waldo Emerson: “Books are the homes of the American people.” I took a picture of it, and that was my social media profile photo for a long time. I still think about that notion a lot.
You, the members of the Association, protect more than just books and information and the places citizens access them. You are protecting the very bedrock of our democracy. All Americans need you to succeed. It’s a great honor to work with you in that cause.
